Last weekend, on Friday the 16th and Saturday the 17th of December, the city of Ghent was the stage for the first edition of Glimps. Glimps is a brand new international showcase festival for professionals and the public. A total of fifty-one bands performed at ten indoor locations in Ghent.

 Glimps wants to introduce rock and pop talent from all over the continent to professionals (bookers, managers, record executives, programmers, journalists, ...) from the Belgian and European music industry. The focus is explicitly on groups from continental and new Europe, most importantly from regions that are rarely addressed. The festival is not only intended for professionals: Glimps is open to the public as well.

I visited Glimps last Saturday. Unfortunately, the concept was better than the groups performing. The idea of using ten different locations was fine. The locations were quite cosy and close together. The groups themselves, however, were not exactly excellent. The Belgian groups still stood out the most.

Glimps was also the centre of some mild controverse even before it started, because the festival was organised by two management offices. These management offices were of course more preoccupies with putting their own groups out there than setting up a neutral music festival.